If you're enrolled in my Query Writing class on April 17th, this is your chance to post your query letter...and possibly get a Turning Points class for free.
My mother died by accidental drowning in 2005, and a year later, I flew cross-country to enter a doctoral program for Clinical Psychology at UCLA. Midway through my training to become a therapist, my mother’s death was exposed as a well-disguised suicide. This revelation challenged my understanding of her and my sense of competency in helping others.
"We All Have Our Reasons," delves into this emotional terrain, intertwining the mystery of my mother's death with the narratives of my patients and my own growth from a quiet, anxious child into a seasoned therapist. Drawing from my experiences as a Senior Psychologist and Director of Clinical Training at UCLA's Cancer Center, I weave a compelling narrative that explores family secrets, maternal influence, transformative grief, and self-discovery.
Admirers of works such as Lori Gottlieb's "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" and Adrienne Brodeur's "Wild Game" will find resonance in my book. Like Gottlieb, I illuminate universal themes through intimate patient conversations, touching on grief, shame, and self-compassion.
With over a decade of teaching and supervisory experience in evidence-based therapy for grief, I am eager to bring that knowledge to a wider audience through narrative. I have appeared as a guest on several popular podcasts, including including Forever35, hosted by authors Kate Spencer and Doree Shafrir, Grief is a Sneaky B!tch, and Zerlina Maxwell’s morning show. As I transition from academic writing to memoir, I would be grateful for your guidance and mentorship as an experienced agent.
Disclaimer: I've never queried. This is my first attempt at a letter. Title not set in stone. My memoir is not quite done yet. Guessing on word count. Hoping to be querying later this year. THANK YOU, Courtney, for doing this! Looking forward to the class!
Dear Agent,
After securing my dream job writing songs full-time for a publishing company started by my childhood idol, country music superstar Martina McBride, I fell in love with and married a fellow songwriter. Eight pregnancies, six miscarriages, one podcast, and a few Netflix song placements later, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade fighting to keep both my writing dreams and babies alive. I’ve been called “the hardest working woman in show business” by legendary country music producer Paul Worley (Dixie Chicks, Lady A), been told my music “fills a void on today’s country radio” by Sirius XM host Storme Warren, and been written up by WhiskeyRiff as someone’s spirit animal, all while privately earning the title “habitual aborter” from my OB/GYN.
It is 2024. Yet even with public figures from Meghan Markle and Jennifer Lawrence to Carrie Underwood sharing their pregnancy losses; even with staggering statistics indicating that one in four women have lost a baby; the subject still remains largely taboo, carrying with it a sense of shame and a lack of resources. In an era where women are constantly fighting to find the ideal work-life home-life balance, be everything to everyone all the while maintaining a Pintrist and Instagram worthy existence, pregnancy loss and infertility is not only devastating but extremely isolating. And then there’s the part where reproductive rights are under siege. Had IVF been restricted or banned just a few years ago, my son would not exist today. Had medically necessary abortions not been permitted, I personally know someone who would have died. I may have died.
In my 80,000 word memoir, Songs We Sing In The Shower, I wash away the make-up and painted on smile and offer a window into the process, the heartache, headspace, and hope of someone struggling with pregnancy loss and infertility. Similar to Suleika Jaouad’s cancer journey, Between Two Kingdoms, in which her life is abruptly interrupted by a cancer diagnosis and the following treatment, my story documents the sudden interruption to life as I knew it with the loss of my first baby and subsequent eight-year fertility journey. My story aims to normalize what so many of us have gone through and enlighten those who have never been there. How else can we support each other? How else can we properly discuss reproductive rights? This is not just a book for people dealing with infertility, but a book for all women, mothers, and those who have an interest in supporting them.
This is my first venture into writing something other than songs, and I would be honored to have an agent with your expertise to help guide me going forward.
Because of your interest in high concept page-turners, allow me to introduce WELCOME TO THE CLUB, an 89,000-word thriller about a guilt-ridden librarian who joins a support group for other women like her – wives of serial killers – and must band with these unlikely allies to stop a murderous psychopath. It would appeal to fans of A FLICKER IN THE DARK, by Stacy Willingham, and ASK FOR ANDREA, by Noelle West Ihli.
Heather Franklin is the most hated woman in her small Pennsylvania town.
After her husband is arrested for the brutal slaying of nearly a dozen women, Heather is harassed by townsfolk who suspect she knows more than she is telling. She hides in her home as the threats and media frenzy escalate. Then she gets an unexpected visitor – Cyndi Carsons, a wealthy socialite whose gilded world exploded years earlier when her husband was imprisoned for being a serial killer.
Cyndi has an invitation: come to her exclusive and lush South Carolina island for a secret but supportive meeting with other wives of serial killers. After all, who else better understands what Heather is going through? With trepidation, Heather accepts and in Cyndi’s mansion meets other women of diverse backgrounds but a shared pain, finding understanding amid the bright cocktails and dark confessions.
But her peace is destroyed when the wives stumble upon a murdered woman during a hike in the woods.
Afraid they will be implicated, the wives hide the body. However, clues point to the grim conclusion that a serial killer is on the loose. Unable to go to the police but unwilling to allow another psychopath to murder again, Heather and her reluctant allies must find this monster while dealing with the suspicion that the killer may be one of them.
I developed an interest in serial killers after covering the Jeffery Dahmer case for the Chicago Sun-Times. During my journalism career, I also wrote about potential connections between H.H. Holmes, known for his role in "Devil in the White City," and Jack the Ripper.
To ensure accuracy in this, my debut novel a former FBI profiler has reviewed the manuscript. Internationally best-selling British thriller writer, S.J. Watson, was my mentor in this effort, as well.
I am writing to seek representation for my memoir, The Only Life You Could Save. My book follows my daughter's three years of cancer treatment during the pandemic and the emotional and financial impact cancer had on our single-parent family.
In May 2020, my 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. What began as a pain in her knee became a three-year-fight to save her life. Pandemic restrictions and the bureaucracy of the US healthcare system further complicated our experience. My memoir explores the moments of light during those years, when I’d almost forget my kid was nearly losing her life, and the moments so dark they took my breath away.
While the rest of the world toiled with the uncertainty of COVID, our pandemic experience was complicated by cancer. The two often intertwined like snakes, and my family existed under the doubled weight of both. Throughout this experience, it became clear that I could not save my daughter. I could only trust her medical team’s advice, follow her treatment plan, and parent her through it all. The doctors and nurses did save her life, but in the end I found that the only life I could save was my own.
My book follows our path through our cancer days, giving an honest look into what kids in cancer treatment experience and the challenges faced by their families. It subverts the expectations we place on single mothers and strips away the image of the upbeat cancer kid roaming the hospital halls in a superhero cape. It tells the story of my family’s struggles and triumphs, overcoming unimaginable circumstances.
This book has a wide audience, as it draws on the experience of caring for a child with cancer, as well as single mothering, the US healthcare system, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It will appeal to readers of The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs, Maid by Stephanie Land, and This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris.
I have published two companion essays to my book, one with Reactor Mag and one with The Doe. I have two additional pieces forthcoming with Thrillist and Business Insider, and publish weekly newsletters on Substack exploring life after cancer. I hold an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I live outside of Philadelphia with my two kids and our numerous pets.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this. I hope to hear from you soon.
Well, this post has already helped enormously, because after reading so many enticing examples, I re-read my query letter and immediately saw how it was far too long and rambling. Whoops! Here's a shortened version, and many thanks to those who have shared theirs here.
Dear [agent[,
When I learned that [fact about past representation/manuscript wishlist/other relevant detail], I thought you might be interested in my book: NAVIGATING THE PATH YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE ON: THE INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF ILLNESS, a nonfiction book for readers with a serious illness.
You would think there would be a hundred classic books that trace the intense emotional and identity-churning journey of illness. And yet, mostly, the shelves are stacked with dramatic memoirs and clinical guidebooks for specific diseases.
This missing book is what I am writing. NAVIGATING THE PATH YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE ON is designed to be both practical guidance and a soothing balm in a bewildering time. Imagine Four Thousand Weeks for illness. Or Bird by Bird for illness.
I bring to the book the double experience of a patient and a healthcare nonprofit professional. I am currently Chief Communications Officer at XXXXXXX, which is dedicated to humanism in healthcare, after spending more than a decade in journalism as a newspaper editor. On the patient side, I was diagnosed with XXXXX at 13 and a rare cancer at 25. I have looked for a book like this with no success. The only thing left to do is to write it.
While traveling my own unchosen path, I've learned that many small, doable things can help in navigating illness. For example, the Ring Theory explains how to distribute the emotional burden shared among friends and family; specific ways of breathing can alter a nervous system quickly; and distanced third-person thought exercises can shift a worrying mind. These tools and many more, though, are usually scattered across books and articles, often related to productivity or psychology, rather than specifically selected for someone who is sick.
My hope is to bundle these tools, along with words of solace, into a book that would be useful and beloved, picked up in dark 2 a.m. moments, and passed along to others.
I’m seeking representation for my 74,000 word rom com, Written in the Skye. (Fill in personalization, why querying). While not quite as spicy, my work is similar in tone to Tessa Bailey’s It Happened One Summer, combined with all the escapist vibes and forced proximity of Josie Silver’s One Night on the Island.
Skye Ainslie is blocked. Emotionally and creatively. Everyday she tries to write her novel to fulfill her dream of becoming a best selling mystery author and earn enough to repair their Scottish castle, which is currently crumbling around them. Everyday the words won’t come. Until her father rents out their home to an American film production and she meets Miles Casey, actor, heart throb and Skye’s movie crush when she was a teenager.
Miles Casey has made some terrible movies in the past couple years, one featuring a talking baseball. Cringe. This film in Scotland is his way back into the critics good graces, back on the road to an Oscar. He just needs to focus.
When Miles and Skye meet, they are instantly attracted to each other. He’s handsome, funny, charming and miraculously Skye’s writer's block is gone. She’s witty, gorgeous and completely off limits to date since she lives where they are filming and Miles promises the director he won’t jeopardize the location.
Skye doesn’t believe in love and Miles doesn't want to risk his job, but what could be the harm in a little fling?
Told in dual POV from Skye and Miles’ perspective, Written in the Skye is a lighthearted whimsical rom com filled with all the charm of a Nora Ephron film.
When I’m not writing or reading, I’m either working at an elementary school library, painting with my three-year-old, watching Meg Ryan movies with my husband.
Please let me know if you’d like to read the full manuscript.
I see that you are on the lookout for narratives that examine complicated relationships with empathy and humor and I’m hoping that you might be intrigued by my 89,000-word upmarket novel, RESCUING ANNIE.
After ending a thirty-year marriage to a man with a chronic case of failure to launch, Annie, at fifty-five, is on the verge of getting everything she’s ever wanted: a deal to publish her debut novel and life lived on her own terms. But trouble has a way of following Annie around. With her widowed mother in the grip of dementia, and siblings who can’t or won’t help, Annie must come to the rescue. With the crisis de jour, Annie has no sooner settled her mother in her Florida condo when her twentysomething daughter calls from Paris, distraught over the sudden death of her best friend. Annie sees no choice but to fly to Paris.
Trying to juggle it all—her increasingly disoriented mother, a bereaved daughter she can’t seem to comfort and a publishing dream vanishing with every missed deadline—Paris becomes an irresistible diversion, especially when a romance begins to bloom with a handsome French artist who reminds her that part of herself is still very much alive. When her daughter goes into hiding, and her alarmed ex takes the next flight out to Paris with an ulterior motive—he wants Annie back—complications reach a crescendo. There simply isn’t enough of her to go around. As her mother slips further away, Annie has to confront what it really means to choose herself after a lifetime as the good daughter, the good wife and the good mother—learning that freedom was hers for the taking all along.
RESCUING ANNIE will appeal to fans of the complex relationship dynamics and mid-life reinvention in MONOGAMY (Sue Miller) and LEAVING (Roxane Robinson) and the nuanced portrayal of dementia in SIGNAL FIRES (Dani Shapiro).
I write a twice-weekly Substack newsletter, Living in 3D: Divorce, Dementia and Destiny, for an engaged readership. A freelance writer, editor and journalist for Reuters and a ghostwriter of business books for Palgrave MacMillan, I lived in Sweden and Malta for two decades. My middle-grade novel, MORMOR’S PIANO, won first prize in the unpublished middle-grade fiction category from the Florida Writer’s Association (FWA) in 2016. My short stories have been published in FWA’s annual anthologies. My full bio can be found at amybrownauthor.com.
Adrienne Rich once wrote: "The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet." They also make for the most intriguing stories. I'm looking to normalize the experiences of queer women in upmarket fiction—because it's time.
In 2022, I completed Catapult's 12-month novel generator taught by Lynn Steger Strong. I have since completed two rounds of developmental edits on my manuscript with Kit Haggard. I now seek representation for my completed 88,000-word novel, The Wife Who Washed Away. Comps include Biography of X and Fates and Furies. It is a queer narrative exploring the love and friendships of women, how mental illness can crowd a marriage, and how some betrayals are too large to forgive.
As a successful journalist, Cam is supposed to be in the prime of her life and starting a family with the woman she loves. Instead, a historical flood that swallows parts of NYC and leaves them uninhabitable, widows her. When the body of her wife is never recovered, she's left to pick up the pieces in a city still mourning the death of thousands.
We first meet Cam nearing the one-year anniversary of the flood, when a new love interest enters her life and she begins to let herself dream of a future. That is, until her wife Meg reappears, very much alive, having taken the flood as an opportunity to disappear and heal from childhood trauma. Cam must now face that her once picture-perfect marriage was anything but, while also deciding whether forgiveness is possible. The narrative is told from alternating perspectives—flipping between Cam in the present and Meg in the past—eventually converging.
As a 41-year-old queer woman, I've noticed a dearth of stories about middle-of-life lesbians. Most queer up-market fiction highlights younger characters and themes of coming out, first love, and early career. My book explores the lives of "geriatric lesbians," covering topics of infidelity, second love, and healing. Though this is a book about gay women, it is not just for the LGBTQ+ community. The themes and emotions are universal.
A bit about me: I received my M.A. in Journalism and completed a Tow-Knight Fellowship in Entrepreneurial Journalism. After briefly working as a managing editor of an LGBTQ+ website, I jumped ship and have worked in tech for the past decade. I now lead SEO strategy for a large mental wellness startup. I currently live in Brooklyn with my wife and neurotic rescue dog. I fully embrace the cliche (though we did not U-Haul after the first date).
I would love to hear from you. Please let me know if I can answer any questions or if you'd like to review my manuscript. Thank you truly for your time.
Because of your interest in unique memoirs [insert personal note], I’d like to share my hybrid memoir The Brat and the Bullfighter, a coming-of-age story of both a horse and a human, told from alternating perspectives.
Artilheiro, a Lusitano stallion, takes you on a journey from his breeding farm in Brazil to an auction in Florida and a ranch in California, where a revolving door of riders turns his innate confidence into fear, mistrust, and apprehension. His path mirrors my own transformation from an introverted girl, affected by countless relocations as an Army brat, into a bolder woman unwilling to tolerate equine injustice. Our intertwined narratives reveal our struggles with identity, loss, and displacement, while also exploring the profound human-animal bond and enduring power of love, resilience, and finding home.
Black Beauty was written as an animal rights manifesto two centuries ago and yet today, people still treat horses as machines. Even fortunate horses, such as Artilheiro, suffer daily psychological trauma when misunderstood, misjudged, and mislabeled. My passion is to advocate for greater empathy toward these magnificent creatures and their mental well-being.
Likewise, I’m passionate about shedding light on the Army brat experience. Despite 15 million military brats in the U.S., including Reese Witherspoon, Annie Leibovitz, and Michael Stipe, our stories are conspicuously absent from the market. My book will help fill this gap.
I have owned horses for 24 years and written for high-tech companies for 26, with articles appearing in SecurityWeek and Security Magazine. Similar to the human-horse connections depicted in Chosen by a Horse (Susan Richards) and Horse Crazy (Sarah Maslin Nir), my book will resonate with readers who know the healing power of horses or have ever been uprooted and made to feel like an outsider.
My manuscript is complete at 92,000 words. I’d love to send it to you.
After a pretty normal shift, I had my first panic attack on the 4 train. A subway packed with people, yet no one saw my tears or me gasping for air. I had just spent twenty-four hours without sleep, five babies were born, obstetric emergencies called and managed, fights breaking out, staff yelling. I left the hospital that morning completely depleted, yet unfazed. For years I was so used to forcing calm on my body in order to survive my job that it took me a while to realize I was actually just numb. I tried Buddhism, dabbled in Tarot and astrology, spent time in nature, read books about Celtic mythology and witchcraft to reawaken my spirit, but nothing helped with my exhaustion.
I kept going, though. Barreling through burnout because relief took too long. Birth was my calling, but also my undoing. Every day was filled with a soft strength and the multitudes of the human experience. I also regularly witnessed the pernicious overreaches of systems of oppression that exist at every intersection of life, which begin at birth. Despite the pain it caused, I felt a gravity, a purpose, in birth that was so strong, for years, I couldn’t find the courage to leave. Who was I if not a midwife?
Six months into the pandemic, though, which required an impossible level of self-sacrifice, I realized I was in a depression dark and deep and broken beyond repair. Choosing healing felt radical and lonely. We were all suffering, but not many healthcare workers decided to leave. I had no guide, very few tools. I journeyed into the complete unknown, terrified, but finally feeling alive.
SMALL PART OF INFINITY is the story of how a midwife with a decade-plus of experience transformed her burnout into a spiritual practice. It is a braided narrative that is voice-driven, weaves together myth, storytelling, a critical look at society, and a reawakening of the divine feminine in order to offer the reader a journey through healing that is radically simple. It will appeal to readers of "Rooted" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt, "This Here Flesh" by Cole Arthur Riley, "Womb" by Leah Hazard, and was deeply inspired by "Women Who Run with the Wolves" by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
This is my first book, but I have several other publications in peer-reviewed journals and op-eds for Motherly, Business Insider, and Not Safe for Mom Group. I’m currently taking some time away from clinical practice so I can try my best at being a new mom and am savoring the quietude of nap time to focus on my next WIP. My manuscript is complete at 82,000 words and available upon request. Thank you for honoring my work with your time.
They say time heals all wounds. They lied. Time doesn’t heal jack. That’s the lesson Geneva Jones is about to learn in my 80,000 word contemporary women’s fiction novel Geneva Jones is Not an Abused Wife. Combining the “affluent abuse” themes of Big Little Lies with the fun-filled escapism of Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is a natural book club pick and a perfect beach read.
An abusive marriage was never on Geneva’s Jones’s vision board. The child of famous feminist artist Olivia Baker, Geneva was raised to stand up for justice and help others less fortunate, not cower in a corner while her enraged husband hurled Crate & Barrel plates at her. It was bad enough when she became a Victoria’s Secret model at age 15. Her mother could never know her marriage to handsome, well-connected attorney Lan Jones would make Betty Friedan roll over in her grave.
So when Geneva, now 40 and feeling every inch the fading beauty, finally gets a golden opportunity to flee to Florida and move into her now-deceased mom’s Instagram-worthy beach house, she buries her blinding fears about how a woman who survived only on beauty will make it on her own, and takes the leap into a new life. And she nails it!
In a few short months, Geneva dazzles the locals, eats real bacon for the first time in ten years, reads all the trashy romance novels her husband would have torn to shreds, gets a part-time job, and even solves a mystery of the kidnapped town founder. She is doing amazing!
Sure, she jumps a mile every time she hears a loud noise, ran her Vespa into a tree when a dark haired man drove by, and hasn’t slept through the night once due to sweat-drenched nightmares. But other than that, she is totally over Lan. And if she’s still a little skittish, well time heals all wounds right?
So when she learns that Lan is this close to weaseling out of an embezzlement conviction for stealing bereavement settlements from orphans and widows, the last thing Geneva wants to do is go back and testify against his character. She has to think about herself! She has to set healthy boundaries! She has to move on with her life! If only every time she closed her eyes, the tearstained faces of the orphans and widows didn’t appear behind her eyelids. But that should go away in time, right? Right?!
Based on the writers you represent, specifically XXX I think you would be a great partner to help me bring my first work of literary fiction, Chosen Family (70,300 words), into the world.
After my divorce, I yearned for a novel that would tell me it wasn’t too late for a great love. I also wanted a straightforward, mostly linear, first-person narrative. So I wrote one.
When Amy Arnold’s ex-husband dies suddenly, she rekindles the once-close relationship she had with her former in-laws, especially her indomitable mother-in-law, Roz. Because she is a convert, they are her only Jewish family, and she relies on their support for her teenage daughter who is navigating the year of Jewish mourning rituals. Then Amy falls in love with Will Stern –guileless, direct, and exactly the man she needs – but Roz and the rest of the family can’t accept her happiness amidst their mourning. Amy wants both her old family and a new life with Will. She will have to choose between different kinds of love: belonging or possibility.
Chosen Family is a coming-of-middle-age story about wanting to hang on to good things in your past while you grab for better things in your future. It balances themes like trust, regret, and betrayal with humor about parenting, dating, and falling in love and into bed after age 50. It will appeal to readers – and book clubs – who embraced the specific and detailed Jewish context in Nessa Rapoport’s Evening, the theme of starting again in the middle of life of Good Company by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, and the second-chances charm of Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes.
When I’m not writing, I work on urban policy for a philanthropic foundation. I’ve co-authored a non-fiction book, The Metropolitan Revolution, published in 2013 by the Brookings Press. A brief, early foray into journalism led to my byline appearing in The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Next City. My husband and I live in Washington, D.C., where we wait patiently for our respective college-age children to visit.
Thank you for your thoughtful consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks so much for this opportunity! I'm excited for the class!
Dear Agent,
(Personalize here)
My son couldn’t see me from the other side of the mattress I was attempting to push up the stairs, but he knew his mother was struggling. I hated that. My lack of strength wasn’t supposed to force him, at nine years old, to be strong. He shouldn’t have to listen to his mother crying behind a mattress, especially on the day he and his little sister moved into an apartment half the size of the only house they remembered living in, as they anticipated starting a different school and everything else my decisions caused to change in their lives. And as I hid behind that mattress, the fear set in that maybe the aftermath of the divorce I chose in order to find happiness would be worse on my children than if I stayed in my unhappy marriage.
CAMOUFLAGE: A Memoir of Divorce, Hope and Self-Discovery (69,000 words) is the story of how I emerged from the shadow of my husband’s military career and found my way back to myself as a single mother approaching middle age. And as I set out on a quest to figure out who I was as a woman without this man, I discovered my life as a military spouse actually prepared me for not being one.
CAMOUFLAGE is a story of letting go and moving on, self-discovery and second chances. My story speaks to readers facing divorce, women searching for lost identities, single parents and military spouses. It would sit on a bookshelf with Lyz Lenz’s THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE, Leslie Jamison’s SPLINTERS and Kelly McMasters’ THE LEAVING SEASON.
Divorce is having a cultural moment in which women are leaving their marriages to pursue happiness. In fact, more than two-thirds of all divorces are filed by women. As Lyz Lenz writes in her best-selling memoir, divorce “requires learning to reimagine happiness beyond what everyone told you it should look like.” As this trend continues, my book fits perfectly into the conversation, while also sharing a unique sneak peek into the life of a Navy officer’s wife.
Similar to my recent reported essay for The TODAY Show, I’ll weave reporting into my existing manuscript. I plan to reach out to family and marriage experts and psychologists to interlace my own story within the cultural moment.
I’ve been a writer and content editor at Military.com for eleven years. My essays about military life and divorce appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, HuffPost, The TODAY Show and YourTango, among others, and I have other work in Business Insider, Grown and Flown, Healthline, The Girlfriend from AARP and more. My HuffPost reel talking about my divorce essay currently has 90K views on Instagram and 13.3K views on TikTok.
I have both a proposal and a full manuscript available upon request. Thank you for your consideration.
Bummer I can't make the class but have loved reading these submissions--I'm sure every participant will learn so much.
On a separate note, how adorable is that plucky little pony, completely unfazed by the "scary" things? Those little ears perked forward! I can imagine her standing beside a flapping gymboree parachute with a back hoof cocked, nonchalantly asking, "Whatever, next...?!"
With the success of TV shows like “The Gilded Age” and “The Buccaneers,” Edith Wharton has become something of a brand-name, associated with period dramas and repressed emotions. EDITH ON FIRE, based on biographical research, gives us another view: a story about ambition, sex, and the tumultuous six-year period that changed the course of Edith’s life.
The novel also highlights the rarely addressed reality of being a woman in late middle-age: Edith suffers uncontrollable episodes of sweating, vertigo, and insomnia. There is no one to whom she would dare confide such intimate details, and “menopause” is not a word she (or any other woman of her era) knows.
After twenty years of a loveless, sexless marriage, Edith has reconciled herself to a life without desire, but when she meets the journalist Morton Fullerton, her world explodes. Their deep intellectual and physical connection lead to a passionate affair. Amazed by her own sexual appetite, and stunned by the power of her body’s physical changes, Edith comes to a reckoning about what matters most: her obligation to her increasingly unwell husband, devotion to her ardent but inconstant lover, or the uncharted path of female literary ambition?
Like Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room, Shana Abé’s An American Beauty, or Dawn Tripp’s Georgia, EDITH ON FIRE (complete at 80K), uses the past to shed light on the present. Readers will be fascinated by the details of Edith’s life in La Belle Epoque Paris and book groups will find a great deal to discuss in terms of Edith’s challenges to social expectations about women, aging, and ambition.
My interest in Edith Wharton comes from my work as a literature professor and feminist scholar; my first nonfiction book, Not in Sisterhood (2001) was a scholarly study of Wharton and her contemporaries. More recently, I published The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction (2023) with Oxford UP. My writing for a general audience has appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, The New York Times, Jane Friedman’s blog, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and The Markaz Review.
This has been immensely helpful. My query letter was too dry so I rewrote it showing how the book will make readers feel and began the query with an emotional punch. Thank you!
Dear Agent,
My mother died by accidental drowning in 2005, and a year later, I flew cross-country to enter a doctoral program for Clinical Psychology at UCLA. Midway through my training to become a therapist, my mother’s death was exposed as a well-disguised suicide. This revelation challenged my understanding of her and my sense of competency in helping others.
"We All Have Our Reasons," delves into this emotional terrain, intertwining the mystery of my mother's death with the narratives of my patients and my own growth from a quiet, anxious child into a seasoned therapist. Drawing from my experiences as a Senior Psychologist and Director of Clinical Training at UCLA's Cancer Center, I weave a compelling narrative that explores family secrets, maternal influence, transformative grief, and self-discovery.
Admirers of works such as Lori Gottlieb's "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" and Adrienne Brodeur's "Wild Game" will find resonance in my book. Like Gottlieb, I illuminate universal themes through intimate patient conversations, touching on grief, shame, and self-compassion.
With over a decade of teaching and supervisory experience in evidence-based therapy for grief, I am eager to bring that knowledge to a wider audience through narrative. I have appeared as a guest on several popular podcasts, including including Forever35, hosted by authors Kate Spencer and Doree Shafrir, Grief is a Sneaky B!tch, and Zerlina Maxwell’s morning show. As I transition from academic writing to memoir, I would be grateful for your guidance and mentorship as an experienced agent.
With gratitude,
Lizzie
Disclaimer: I've never queried. This is my first attempt at a letter. Title not set in stone. My memoir is not quite done yet. Guessing on word count. Hoping to be querying later this year. THANK YOU, Courtney, for doing this! Looking forward to the class!
Dear Agent,
After securing my dream job writing songs full-time for a publishing company started by my childhood idol, country music superstar Martina McBride, I fell in love with and married a fellow songwriter. Eight pregnancies, six miscarriages, one podcast, and a few Netflix song placements later, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade fighting to keep both my writing dreams and babies alive. I’ve been called “the hardest working woman in show business” by legendary country music producer Paul Worley (Dixie Chicks, Lady A), been told my music “fills a void on today’s country radio” by Sirius XM host Storme Warren, and been written up by WhiskeyRiff as someone’s spirit animal, all while privately earning the title “habitual aborter” from my OB/GYN.
It is 2024. Yet even with public figures from Meghan Markle and Jennifer Lawrence to Carrie Underwood sharing their pregnancy losses; even with staggering statistics indicating that one in four women have lost a baby; the subject still remains largely taboo, carrying with it a sense of shame and a lack of resources. In an era where women are constantly fighting to find the ideal work-life home-life balance, be everything to everyone all the while maintaining a Pintrist and Instagram worthy existence, pregnancy loss and infertility is not only devastating but extremely isolating. And then there’s the part where reproductive rights are under siege. Had IVF been restricted or banned just a few years ago, my son would not exist today. Had medically necessary abortions not been permitted, I personally know someone who would have died. I may have died.
In my 80,000 word memoir, Songs We Sing In The Shower, I wash away the make-up and painted on smile and offer a window into the process, the heartache, headspace, and hope of someone struggling with pregnancy loss and infertility. Similar to Suleika Jaouad’s cancer journey, Between Two Kingdoms, in which her life is abruptly interrupted by a cancer diagnosis and the following treatment, my story documents the sudden interruption to life as I knew it with the loss of my first baby and subsequent eight-year fertility journey. My story aims to normalize what so many of us have gone through and enlighten those who have never been there. How else can we support each other? How else can we properly discuss reproductive rights? This is not just a book for people dealing with infertility, but a book for all women, mothers, and those who have an interest in supporting them.
This is my first venture into writing something other than songs, and I would be honored to have an agent with your expertise to help guide me going forward.
Thank you for your time,
Courtney
Dear Agent:
Because of your interest in high concept page-turners, allow me to introduce WELCOME TO THE CLUB, an 89,000-word thriller about a guilt-ridden librarian who joins a support group for other women like her – wives of serial killers – and must band with these unlikely allies to stop a murderous psychopath. It would appeal to fans of A FLICKER IN THE DARK, by Stacy Willingham, and ASK FOR ANDREA, by Noelle West Ihli.
Heather Franklin is the most hated woman in her small Pennsylvania town.
After her husband is arrested for the brutal slaying of nearly a dozen women, Heather is harassed by townsfolk who suspect she knows more than she is telling. She hides in her home as the threats and media frenzy escalate. Then she gets an unexpected visitor – Cyndi Carsons, a wealthy socialite whose gilded world exploded years earlier when her husband was imprisoned for being a serial killer.
Cyndi has an invitation: come to her exclusive and lush South Carolina island for a secret but supportive meeting with other wives of serial killers. After all, who else better understands what Heather is going through? With trepidation, Heather accepts and in Cyndi’s mansion meets other women of diverse backgrounds but a shared pain, finding understanding amid the bright cocktails and dark confessions.
But her peace is destroyed when the wives stumble upon a murdered woman during a hike in the woods.
Afraid they will be implicated, the wives hide the body. However, clues point to the grim conclusion that a serial killer is on the loose. Unable to go to the police but unwilling to allow another psychopath to murder again, Heather and her reluctant allies must find this monster while dealing with the suspicion that the killer may be one of them.
I developed an interest in serial killers after covering the Jeffery Dahmer case for the Chicago Sun-Times. During my journalism career, I also wrote about potential connections between H.H. Holmes, known for his role in "Devil in the White City," and Jack the Ripper.
To ensure accuracy in this, my debut novel a former FBI profiler has reviewed the manuscript. Internationally best-selling British thriller writer, S.J. Watson, was my mentor in this effort, as well.
Thank you for your consideration.
Frank Burgos
Dear [Agent],
I am writing to seek representation for my memoir, The Only Life You Could Save. My book follows my daughter's three years of cancer treatment during the pandemic and the emotional and financial impact cancer had on our single-parent family.
In May 2020, my 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. What began as a pain in her knee became a three-year-fight to save her life. Pandemic restrictions and the bureaucracy of the US healthcare system further complicated our experience. My memoir explores the moments of light during those years, when I’d almost forget my kid was nearly losing her life, and the moments so dark they took my breath away.
While the rest of the world toiled with the uncertainty of COVID, our pandemic experience was complicated by cancer. The two often intertwined like snakes, and my family existed under the doubled weight of both. Throughout this experience, it became clear that I could not save my daughter. I could only trust her medical team’s advice, follow her treatment plan, and parent her through it all. The doctors and nurses did save her life, but in the end I found that the only life I could save was my own.
My book follows our path through our cancer days, giving an honest look into what kids in cancer treatment experience and the challenges faced by their families. It subverts the expectations we place on single mothers and strips away the image of the upbeat cancer kid roaming the hospital halls in a superhero cape. It tells the story of my family’s struggles and triumphs, overcoming unimaginable circumstances.
This book has a wide audience, as it draws on the experience of caring for a child with cancer, as well as single mothering, the US healthcare system, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It will appeal to readers of The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs, Maid by Stephanie Land, and This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris.
I have published two companion essays to my book, one with Reactor Mag and one with The Doe. I have two additional pieces forthcoming with Thrillist and Business Insider, and publish weekly newsletters on Substack exploring life after cancer. I hold an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I live outside of Philadelphia with my two kids and our numerous pets.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this. I hope to hear from you soon.
Yours,
Elizabeth Austin
writingelizabeth.substack.com
Well, this post has already helped enormously, because after reading so many enticing examples, I re-read my query letter and immediately saw how it was far too long and rambling. Whoops! Here's a shortened version, and many thanks to those who have shared theirs here.
Dear [agent[,
When I learned that [fact about past representation/manuscript wishlist/other relevant detail], I thought you might be interested in my book: NAVIGATING THE PATH YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE ON: THE INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF ILLNESS, a nonfiction book for readers with a serious illness.
You would think there would be a hundred classic books that trace the intense emotional and identity-churning journey of illness. And yet, mostly, the shelves are stacked with dramatic memoirs and clinical guidebooks for specific diseases.
This missing book is what I am writing. NAVIGATING THE PATH YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE ON is designed to be both practical guidance and a soothing balm in a bewildering time. Imagine Four Thousand Weeks for illness. Or Bird by Bird for illness.
I bring to the book the double experience of a patient and a healthcare nonprofit professional. I am currently Chief Communications Officer at XXXXXXX, which is dedicated to humanism in healthcare, after spending more than a decade in journalism as a newspaper editor. On the patient side, I was diagnosed with XXXXX at 13 and a rare cancer at 25. I have looked for a book like this with no success. The only thing left to do is to write it.
While traveling my own unchosen path, I've learned that many small, doable things can help in navigating illness. For example, the Ring Theory explains how to distribute the emotional burden shared among friends and family; specific ways of breathing can alter a nervous system quickly; and distanced third-person thought exercises can shift a worrying mind. These tools and many more, though, are usually scattered across books and articles, often related to productivity or psychology, rather than specifically selected for someone who is sick.
My hope is to bundle these tools, along with words of solace, into a book that would be useful and beloved, picked up in dark 2 a.m. moments, and passed along to others.
Thank you for your consideration.
Kind regards,
Brianne
Dear (fill in agent),
I’m seeking representation for my 74,000 word rom com, Written in the Skye. (Fill in personalization, why querying). While not quite as spicy, my work is similar in tone to Tessa Bailey’s It Happened One Summer, combined with all the escapist vibes and forced proximity of Josie Silver’s One Night on the Island.
Skye Ainslie is blocked. Emotionally and creatively. Everyday she tries to write her novel to fulfill her dream of becoming a best selling mystery author and earn enough to repair their Scottish castle, which is currently crumbling around them. Everyday the words won’t come. Until her father rents out their home to an American film production and she meets Miles Casey, actor, heart throb and Skye’s movie crush when she was a teenager.
Miles Casey has made some terrible movies in the past couple years, one featuring a talking baseball. Cringe. This film in Scotland is his way back into the critics good graces, back on the road to an Oscar. He just needs to focus.
When Miles and Skye meet, they are instantly attracted to each other. He’s handsome, funny, charming and miraculously Skye’s writer's block is gone. She’s witty, gorgeous and completely off limits to date since she lives where they are filming and Miles promises the director he won’t jeopardize the location.
Skye doesn’t believe in love and Miles doesn't want to risk his job, but what could be the harm in a little fling?
Told in dual POV from Skye and Miles’ perspective, Written in the Skye is a lighthearted whimsical rom com filled with all the charm of a Nora Ephron film.
When I’m not writing or reading, I’m either working at an elementary school library, painting with my three-year-old, watching Meg Ryan movies with my husband.
Please let me know if you’d like to read the full manuscript.
Thank you,
Nicole Barton
www.nicolebartonwrites.com
Dear Jessica,
I see that you are on the lookout for narratives that examine complicated relationships with empathy and humor and I’m hoping that you might be intrigued by my 89,000-word upmarket novel, RESCUING ANNIE.
After ending a thirty-year marriage to a man with a chronic case of failure to launch, Annie, at fifty-five, is on the verge of getting everything she’s ever wanted: a deal to publish her debut novel and life lived on her own terms. But trouble has a way of following Annie around. With her widowed mother in the grip of dementia, and siblings who can’t or won’t help, Annie must come to the rescue. With the crisis de jour, Annie has no sooner settled her mother in her Florida condo when her twentysomething daughter calls from Paris, distraught over the sudden death of her best friend. Annie sees no choice but to fly to Paris.
Trying to juggle it all—her increasingly disoriented mother, a bereaved daughter she can’t seem to comfort and a publishing dream vanishing with every missed deadline—Paris becomes an irresistible diversion, especially when a romance begins to bloom with a handsome French artist who reminds her that part of herself is still very much alive. When her daughter goes into hiding, and her alarmed ex takes the next flight out to Paris with an ulterior motive—he wants Annie back—complications reach a crescendo. There simply isn’t enough of her to go around. As her mother slips further away, Annie has to confront what it really means to choose herself after a lifetime as the good daughter, the good wife and the good mother—learning that freedom was hers for the taking all along.
RESCUING ANNIE will appeal to fans of the complex relationship dynamics and mid-life reinvention in MONOGAMY (Sue Miller) and LEAVING (Roxane Robinson) and the nuanced portrayal of dementia in SIGNAL FIRES (Dani Shapiro).
I write a twice-weekly Substack newsletter, Living in 3D: Divorce, Dementia and Destiny, for an engaged readership. A freelance writer, editor and journalist for Reuters and a ghostwriter of business books for Palgrave MacMillan, I lived in Sweden and Malta for two decades. My middle-grade novel, MORMOR’S PIANO, won first prize in the unpublished middle-grade fiction category from the Florida Writer’s Association (FWA) in 2016. My short stories have been published in FWA’s annual anthologies. My full bio can be found at amybrownauthor.com.
Thank you for your consideration,
Amy
Hi (insert agent's name),
Adrienne Rich once wrote: "The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet." They also make for the most intriguing stories. I'm looking to normalize the experiences of queer women in upmarket fiction—because it's time.
In 2022, I completed Catapult's 12-month novel generator taught by Lynn Steger Strong. I have since completed two rounds of developmental edits on my manuscript with Kit Haggard. I now seek representation for my completed 88,000-word novel, The Wife Who Washed Away. Comps include Biography of X and Fates and Furies. It is a queer narrative exploring the love and friendships of women, how mental illness can crowd a marriage, and how some betrayals are too large to forgive.
As a successful journalist, Cam is supposed to be in the prime of her life and starting a family with the woman she loves. Instead, a historical flood that swallows parts of NYC and leaves them uninhabitable, widows her. When the body of her wife is never recovered, she's left to pick up the pieces in a city still mourning the death of thousands.
We first meet Cam nearing the one-year anniversary of the flood, when a new love interest enters her life and she begins to let herself dream of a future. That is, until her wife Meg reappears, very much alive, having taken the flood as an opportunity to disappear and heal from childhood trauma. Cam must now face that her once picture-perfect marriage was anything but, while also deciding whether forgiveness is possible. The narrative is told from alternating perspectives—flipping between Cam in the present and Meg in the past—eventually converging.
As a 41-year-old queer woman, I've noticed a dearth of stories about middle-of-life lesbians. Most queer up-market fiction highlights younger characters and themes of coming out, first love, and early career. My book explores the lives of "geriatric lesbians," covering topics of infidelity, second love, and healing. Though this is a book about gay women, it is not just for the LGBTQ+ community. The themes and emotions are universal.
A bit about me: I received my M.A. in Journalism and completed a Tow-Knight Fellowship in Entrepreneurial Journalism. After briefly working as a managing editor of an LGBTQ+ website, I jumped ship and have worked in tech for the past decade. I now lead SEO strategy for a large mental wellness startup. I currently live in Brooklyn with my wife and neurotic rescue dog. I fully embrace the cliche (though we did not U-Haul after the first date).
I would love to hear from you. Please let me know if I can answer any questions or if you'd like to review my manuscript. Thank you truly for your time.
Cheers,
Sara Sugar-Anyanwu
Dear [Agent],
Because of your interest in unique memoirs [insert personal note], I’d like to share my hybrid memoir The Brat and the Bullfighter, a coming-of-age story of both a horse and a human, told from alternating perspectives.
Artilheiro, a Lusitano stallion, takes you on a journey from his breeding farm in Brazil to an auction in Florida and a ranch in California, where a revolving door of riders turns his innate confidence into fear, mistrust, and apprehension. His path mirrors my own transformation from an introverted girl, affected by countless relocations as an Army brat, into a bolder woman unwilling to tolerate equine injustice. Our intertwined narratives reveal our struggles with identity, loss, and displacement, while also exploring the profound human-animal bond and enduring power of love, resilience, and finding home.
Black Beauty was written as an animal rights manifesto two centuries ago and yet today, people still treat horses as machines. Even fortunate horses, such as Artilheiro, suffer daily psychological trauma when misunderstood, misjudged, and mislabeled. My passion is to advocate for greater empathy toward these magnificent creatures and their mental well-being.
Likewise, I’m passionate about shedding light on the Army brat experience. Despite 15 million military brats in the U.S., including Reese Witherspoon, Annie Leibovitz, and Michael Stipe, our stories are conspicuously absent from the market. My book will help fill this gap.
I have owned horses for 24 years and written for high-tech companies for 26, with articles appearing in SecurityWeek and Security Magazine. Similar to the human-horse connections depicted in Chosen by a Horse (Susan Richards) and Horse Crazy (Sarah Maslin Nir), my book will resonate with readers who know the healing power of horses or have ever been uprooted and made to feel like an outsider.
My manuscript is complete at 92,000 words. I’d love to send it to you.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Erin
Dear Agent,
After a pretty normal shift, I had my first panic attack on the 4 train. A subway packed with people, yet no one saw my tears or me gasping for air. I had just spent twenty-four hours without sleep, five babies were born, obstetric emergencies called and managed, fights breaking out, staff yelling. I left the hospital that morning completely depleted, yet unfazed. For years I was so used to forcing calm on my body in order to survive my job that it took me a while to realize I was actually just numb. I tried Buddhism, dabbled in Tarot and astrology, spent time in nature, read books about Celtic mythology and witchcraft to reawaken my spirit, but nothing helped with my exhaustion.
I kept going, though. Barreling through burnout because relief took too long. Birth was my calling, but also my undoing. Every day was filled with a soft strength and the multitudes of the human experience. I also regularly witnessed the pernicious overreaches of systems of oppression that exist at every intersection of life, which begin at birth. Despite the pain it caused, I felt a gravity, a purpose, in birth that was so strong, for years, I couldn’t find the courage to leave. Who was I if not a midwife?
Six months into the pandemic, though, which required an impossible level of self-sacrifice, I realized I was in a depression dark and deep and broken beyond repair. Choosing healing felt radical and lonely. We were all suffering, but not many healthcare workers decided to leave. I had no guide, very few tools. I journeyed into the complete unknown, terrified, but finally feeling alive.
SMALL PART OF INFINITY is the story of how a midwife with a decade-plus of experience transformed her burnout into a spiritual practice. It is a braided narrative that is voice-driven, weaves together myth, storytelling, a critical look at society, and a reawakening of the divine feminine in order to offer the reader a journey through healing that is radically simple. It will appeal to readers of "Rooted" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt, "This Here Flesh" by Cole Arthur Riley, "Womb" by Leah Hazard, and was deeply inspired by "Women Who Run with the Wolves" by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
This is my first book, but I have several other publications in peer-reviewed journals and op-eds for Motherly, Business Insider, and Not Safe for Mom Group. I’m currently taking some time away from clinical practice so I can try my best at being a new mom and am savoring the quietude of nap time to focus on my next WIP. My manuscript is complete at 82,000 words and available upon request. Thank you for honoring my work with your time.
Dear Agent:
They say time heals all wounds. They lied. Time doesn’t heal jack. That’s the lesson Geneva Jones is about to learn in my 80,000 word contemporary women’s fiction novel Geneva Jones is Not an Abused Wife. Combining the “affluent abuse” themes of Big Little Lies with the fun-filled escapism of Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is a natural book club pick and a perfect beach read.
An abusive marriage was never on Geneva’s Jones’s vision board. The child of famous feminist artist Olivia Baker, Geneva was raised to stand up for justice and help others less fortunate, not cower in a corner while her enraged husband hurled Crate & Barrel plates at her. It was bad enough when she became a Victoria’s Secret model at age 15. Her mother could never know her marriage to handsome, well-connected attorney Lan Jones would make Betty Friedan roll over in her grave.
So when Geneva, now 40 and feeling every inch the fading beauty, finally gets a golden opportunity to flee to Florida and move into her now-deceased mom’s Instagram-worthy beach house, she buries her blinding fears about how a woman who survived only on beauty will make it on her own, and takes the leap into a new life. And she nails it!
In a few short months, Geneva dazzles the locals, eats real bacon for the first time in ten years, reads all the trashy romance novels her husband would have torn to shreds, gets a part-time job, and even solves a mystery of the kidnapped town founder. She is doing amazing!
Sure, she jumps a mile every time she hears a loud noise, ran her Vespa into a tree when a dark haired man drove by, and hasn’t slept through the night once due to sweat-drenched nightmares. But other than that, she is totally over Lan. And if she’s still a little skittish, well time heals all wounds right?
So when she learns that Lan is this close to weaseling out of an embezzlement conviction for stealing bereavement settlements from orphans and widows, the last thing Geneva wants to do is go back and testify against his character. She has to think about herself! She has to set healthy boundaries! She has to move on with her life! If only every time she closed her eyes, the tearstained faces of the orphans and widows didn’t appear behind her eyelids. But that should go away in time, right? Right?!
Based on the writers you represent, specifically XXX I think you would be a great partner to help me bring my first work of literary fiction, Chosen Family (70,300 words), into the world.
After my divorce, I yearned for a novel that would tell me it wasn’t too late for a great love. I also wanted a straightforward, mostly linear, first-person narrative. So I wrote one.
When Amy Arnold’s ex-husband dies suddenly, she rekindles the once-close relationship she had with her former in-laws, especially her indomitable mother-in-law, Roz. Because she is a convert, they are her only Jewish family, and she relies on their support for her teenage daughter who is navigating the year of Jewish mourning rituals. Then Amy falls in love with Will Stern –guileless, direct, and exactly the man she needs – but Roz and the rest of the family can’t accept her happiness amidst their mourning. Amy wants both her old family and a new life with Will. She will have to choose between different kinds of love: belonging or possibility.
Chosen Family is a coming-of-middle-age story about wanting to hang on to good things in your past while you grab for better things in your future. It balances themes like trust, regret, and betrayal with humor about parenting, dating, and falling in love and into bed after age 50. It will appeal to readers – and book clubs – who embraced the specific and detailed Jewish context in Nessa Rapoport’s Evening, the theme of starting again in the middle of life of Good Company by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, and the second-chances charm of Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes.
When I’m not writing, I work on urban policy for a philanthropic foundation. I’ve co-authored a non-fiction book, The Metropolitan Revolution, published in 2013 by the Brookings Press. A brief, early foray into journalism led to my byline appearing in The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Next City. My husband and I live in Washington, D.C., where we wait patiently for our respective college-age children to visit.
Thank you for your thoughtful consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks so much for this opportunity! I'm excited for the class!
Dear Agent,
(Personalize here)
My son couldn’t see me from the other side of the mattress I was attempting to push up the stairs, but he knew his mother was struggling. I hated that. My lack of strength wasn’t supposed to force him, at nine years old, to be strong. He shouldn’t have to listen to his mother crying behind a mattress, especially on the day he and his little sister moved into an apartment half the size of the only house they remembered living in, as they anticipated starting a different school and everything else my decisions caused to change in their lives. And as I hid behind that mattress, the fear set in that maybe the aftermath of the divorce I chose in order to find happiness would be worse on my children than if I stayed in my unhappy marriage.
CAMOUFLAGE: A Memoir of Divorce, Hope and Self-Discovery (69,000 words) is the story of how I emerged from the shadow of my husband’s military career and found my way back to myself as a single mother approaching middle age. And as I set out on a quest to figure out who I was as a woman without this man, I discovered my life as a military spouse actually prepared me for not being one.
CAMOUFLAGE is a story of letting go and moving on, self-discovery and second chances. My story speaks to readers facing divorce, women searching for lost identities, single parents and military spouses. It would sit on a bookshelf with Lyz Lenz’s THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE, Leslie Jamison’s SPLINTERS and Kelly McMasters’ THE LEAVING SEASON.
Divorce is having a cultural moment in which women are leaving their marriages to pursue happiness. In fact, more than two-thirds of all divorces are filed by women. As Lyz Lenz writes in her best-selling memoir, divorce “requires learning to reimagine happiness beyond what everyone told you it should look like.” As this trend continues, my book fits perfectly into the conversation, while also sharing a unique sneak peek into the life of a Navy officer’s wife.
Similar to my recent reported essay for The TODAY Show, I’ll weave reporting into my existing manuscript. I plan to reach out to family and marriage experts and psychologists to interlace my own story within the cultural moment.
I’ve been a writer and content editor at Military.com for eleven years. My essays about military life and divorce appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, HuffPost, The TODAY Show and YourTango, among others, and I have other work in Business Insider, Grown and Flown, Healthline, The Girlfriend from AARP and more. My HuffPost reel talking about my divorce essay currently has 90K views on Instagram and 13.3K views on TikTok.
I have both a proposal and a full manuscript available upon request. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Heather Sweeney
https://www.heatherlsweeney.com/
Bummer I can't make the class but have loved reading these submissions--I'm sure every participant will learn so much.
On a separate note, how adorable is that plucky little pony, completely unfazed by the "scary" things? Those little ears perked forward! I can imagine her standing beside a flapping gymboree parachute with a back hoof cocked, nonchalantly asking, "Whatever, next...?!"
[Dear Agent, personalized etc etc]
With the success of TV shows like “The Gilded Age” and “The Buccaneers,” Edith Wharton has become something of a brand-name, associated with period dramas and repressed emotions. EDITH ON FIRE, based on biographical research, gives us another view: a story about ambition, sex, and the tumultuous six-year period that changed the course of Edith’s life.
The novel also highlights the rarely addressed reality of being a woman in late middle-age: Edith suffers uncontrollable episodes of sweating, vertigo, and insomnia. There is no one to whom she would dare confide such intimate details, and “menopause” is not a word she (or any other woman of her era) knows.
After twenty years of a loveless, sexless marriage, Edith has reconciled herself to a life without desire, but when she meets the journalist Morton Fullerton, her world explodes. Their deep intellectual and physical connection lead to a passionate affair. Amazed by her own sexual appetite, and stunned by the power of her body’s physical changes, Edith comes to a reckoning about what matters most: her obligation to her increasingly unwell husband, devotion to her ardent but inconstant lover, or the uncharted path of female literary ambition?
Like Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room, Shana Abé’s An American Beauty, or Dawn Tripp’s Georgia, EDITH ON FIRE (complete at 80K), uses the past to shed light on the present. Readers will be fascinated by the details of Edith’s life in La Belle Epoque Paris and book groups will find a great deal to discuss in terms of Edith’s challenges to social expectations about women, aging, and ambition.
My interest in Edith Wharton comes from my work as a literature professor and feminist scholar; my first nonfiction book, Not in Sisterhood (2001) was a scholarly study of Wharton and her contemporaries. More recently, I published The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction (2023) with Oxford UP. My writing for a general audience has appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, The New York Times, Jane Friedman’s blog, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and The Markaz Review.
This has been immensely helpful. My query letter was too dry so I rewrote it showing how the book will make readers feel and began the query with an emotional punch. Thank you!